Speech recognition software has become increasingly common in recent years, especially since smartphones equipped with microphones and powerful processors have become widely available.
Many smartphones and other computing devices available today include software which allows users to enter text by uttering a word or phrase into the smartphone's microphone. For example, speech-to-text software such as DragonDictate™ may be used to interpret a recorded audio representation of a spoken utterance and generate an estimated text representation of the spoken utterance.
Some computing devices also allow users to issue commands via spoken requests, thereby enabling at least partial hands-free operation of those devices, which conventionally have required user input to be provided via mouse clicks, keystrokes, and/or taps of a touch screen. Well-known examples include the Apple™ speech-recognition application, Siri™, installed on many iPhone™ smartphones and other iOS™ devices, the Google Now™ speech-recognition application which runs, among others, on smartphones running the Google Android™ operating system, and the Microsoft Cortana™ speech-recognition application which runs on many Windows Phone™ devices. These speech recognition software applications are also sometimes known as intelligent personal assistants, because they provide a one-stop service akin to that of a personal assistant, fielding potentially vague requests from a user and either responding directly to simple requests, or handing the requests off to more specialized applications such as web browsers and mapping applications if the request is deemed to require more specialized attention.